When informed that they fell for what was a satire, some insisted that it still counted against Trump, because things that are true about Trump made this seem plausible. Others chided the satirist for contributing to the fake news problem... and, indeed, the tweet would count as "fake news" within the Allcott/Gentzkow definition, which includes "many articles that originate on satirical websites but could be misunderstood as factual, especially when viewed in isolation on Twitter or Facebook feeds" and must therefore include satirical tweets that begin with no context at all.

I think it would be funny to spread similar stories about Trump, just to see if people bite. Believe it or not, he finds even NFL broadcasts too heavy or intellectual, and constantly demands that someone put Treehouse back on.

The Gorilla Channel Test: If enough people find it plausible that the president has spent multiple hours hunched in front of a television, shouting instructions to gorilla fight combatants, maybe it's time for a new president.

I miss the Russian collusion stories! What happened? I was reminded because sometimes I like to watch the Ancient Aliens series, and there is a line that they repeat, right before they go full whacko “Ancient Alien theorists suggest... and IF TRUE then....”

And all I can think is “Russian collusion theorist suggest... and IF TRUE!....”

The Gorilla Channel Test: If enough people find it plausible that the president has spent multiple hours hunched in front of a television, shouting instructions to gorilla fight combatants, maybe it's time for a new president.

The thing is, this should have fallen into one of the Allcott/Gentzkow categories of non-fake news: satire but everybody recognizes it as satirical. The trouble is, lefties will always believe anything negative about Trump, no matter how obviously it was meant as satire, so it falls under their definition of fake news.

The Gorilla Channel Test: If enough people find it plausible that the president has spent multiple hours hunched in front of a television, shouting instructions to gorilla fight combatants, maybe it's time for a new president.

If enough people find it plausible then we ought to expand our ability to incarcerate these lefties.

Kinda funny..I stepped into pottery artist's studio before Christmas and he was working..tv in background. Guy was stocky, kinda stout and yes..kinda hairy on back of neck.He looked at me and nodded in the direction of the tv showing gorillas and said "Watching my peeps".

Some people say thatTrump could get away with murder if he shot someone in the middle of the street, and other people would accuse him of murder if he said he said words to that effect.......You've got to take all these reports with a grain of sand. Sometime back there was a report on Fox News that President Clinton was getting bjs in the the Oval Office. Yeah, right. Just how gullible do they think the American public is.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough said President Donald Trump was momentarily speechless after he once asked him, “Can you read?” There was “awkward silence,” Scarborough wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in The Washington Post. Scarborough said the exchange occurred in a “tense meeting” he and his co-host Mika Brzezinski had with Trump after a debate in September 2015. “’I’m serious, Donald. Do you read?’ I continued. ‘If someone wrote you a one-page paper on a policy, could you read it?’”

Yeah, Joe Scarborough worries that Trump is literally illiterate. But that’s because Trump! And the fact that Trump is in utter disbelief that he would even be asked this question proves he is hiding that he can’t read! Didn’t Joe know Trump reads Mein Kampf every night a little passage before going to sleep!

To this day you could find people who'd swear they once heard Sarah Palin say "I can see Russia from my house." And why not? If you're gullible enough to swallow the toxic bouilliabaise of voodoo economics and State cultism that we call "liberalism," you're gullible enough to swallow anything.

I did not. You could have asked me before jumping to that conclusion, but you didn’t.

Anyway; no, I did not fall for it. I never had the chance. I learned of the story as a fait accompli.

The Althouse gang seems to want to presume that a large body of anti-Trump ideologues were all hoodwinked by this story. The undercurrent being that their Trump hatred drove them to a silly presumption/acceptance of a parody as fact.

But it seems to me that the entire thing took place in an inconsequential little backwater of Twitter. And that the number (and nature) of the people who were fooled is likewise inconsequential.

Talk about insights into people's minds: Imagine yourself living in a world where you actually believe that someone who spends 17 hours a day watching the "Gorilla Channel" has been elected president. No wonder those people are hysterical. In their world a moron is in charge of the nuclear codes. How do they sleep at night?

Those who regard Trump as a savvy business man who just ended one of the most successful first years of any president would never have been fooled. Thus proving which group has a better grasp of reality. Unfortunately, some --perhaps most-- of the delusional people work for the media.